Monday, February 05, 2007

It’s easy, it’s painless, and the information you get can be priceless.

For example, I am currently interested in sleep (probably because I’m not getting enough of it!!) So I set up an alert for ‘sleep’. I call this the incubation period. For a couple of days, I get daily emails on all things ‘sleep‘. After reviewing the alerts, I notice a trend toward a couple of sub-topics which help me narrow down my article idea. I create alerts on these two new sub topics and a couple of days later, I have enough information to write an informed and marketable query letter. All thanks to Google.

Google alerts can help you discover trends, find out what people are saying, discover experts, and find out what’s already been published. It’s a gold mine of information.